Harry Styles Recalls Using Magic Mushrooms While Recording New Album

Former One Direction star Harry Styles is on the road promoting his upcomg sophomore effort, Fine Line, which is slated for release on December 13. Recently, Styles sat down with Zane Lowe for an interview on his Apple TV show, New Music Daily, where he discussed the recording process and his adventures with magic mushrooms."Making this record, I just felt so much more joyous. I felt safe," Styles explained to Lowe. Styles said that he doesn't usually indulge in alcohol or drugs while he's working but he felt safe among friends in Malibu. He decided that it was time to do some experimenting. "My thing with drugs is that if you're taking anything to escape or to try and hide from stuff then you shouldn't even drink. But if you're taking anything to have fun and be creative, then great. I was with my friends and making an album, you get in your head and you hit these bumps in the road...sometimes you take something and you don't worry about it. It's kind of stress-relieving in a sense," Styles shared.Recording On ShroomsThe 25-year-old hearthrob first opened up about his experience recording on shrooms in a Rolling Stone profile this past August.“We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he says of the Malibu location where he recorded his new album. “We’d just turn the speakers into the yard. You’d hear the blender going, and think, ‘So we’re all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.’”Styles highlights a corner of the room where a now-infamous accident occurred while he was tripping.“This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”Styles pointed out that he purposefully avoided drugs and heavy drinking while in One Direction because he didn't want to destroy the band. “When I was in the band, to me it felt like it was so much bigger than any of us; I felt, I’m not going to be the one who fucked it up,” Styles said. “So I was like, I’m not going to do any of that stuff. So I was like, now is the time in my life when you probably want to go out and experiment."Back in 2017, Styles told The Sun, “On the first couple of tours it was so exciting as we’d have a drink and go to parties. But for me, the albums got higher so they become harder to sing so I knew if I didn’t come off stage and go to bed I wouldn’t be able to sing the next night. Also, it’s just not for me. I’d rather wake up with a clear head. I’m not straight edge or anything – I’ll celebrate and hang out with friends when it’s the right time. But I like knowing I’m not going to be stressing about having to do something the next day."Liam's BattleStyles' former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne has been open about his heavy alcohol use during the height of the band's fame. Payne spoke to Men's Health Australia about using alcohol to deal with the stress of being mega famous."It's almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed (drunk) quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on," he said. "I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast, but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic."Payne added, "It’s difficult when you have the level of fame that we had in the band. There have been a lot of people in trouble with mental health that aren’t really getting the help that they need and I think that’s a bit of a problem in our industry. It’s the same shit that happens to everyone, that’s been happening since the '70s. You know what the traps are and if you are lucky enough, like me, to be able to get out of that scenario and back into a sense of normality, then you know it’s a bit different.”

On the Other Side of Addiction, Only Love Remains

In my darker moments I’d search the obituaries for his name.Orlando Reyes JimenezPreparing to grieve my ex-husband’s death had become familiar; a routine performed in solitude. My procedure was always the same. I’d fill his favorite silver mug with chamomile tea and type his name into a search engine. I would scroll the death notices and inhale the steam; it smelled of sunlight and grass. I would wrap my hands around his mug until the tea grew cold. After four years I still hadn’t found an obituary but I knew he could be dead. I knew he had been homeless. I knew his health was spiraling downward. I suspected he still drank heavily. I was tired of the shame and silence that surrounded loving him. Alcoholism overshadowed his life. I did not want it to overshadow his death.My Second FamilyAt the end of our ten-year marriage I had become terrified that he’d die. Almost daily I would help him to bed after whiskey binges led him to black out. He never remembered the way he crawled down the hallway and how I turned him on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his vomit. In the mornings I’d wipe his clammy forehead and smooth his black bangs. His thick hair still curled at the ends just as it had when we met. We were just kids then, only 12 years old. During our teens I spent so much time at his house that his parents and brothers became my second family. His mom fed me bowls of molé with tortillas while his dad and I discussed books and music deep into the twilight. By the time we got married in our twenties, the wedding ceremony made formal what we had known all along: we were family. In our twenties we partied, but I assumed it was just a college thing. I grew out of it and into graduate school. By the time I began teaching college and seeing music therapy clients his party binges had turned into daily drinking. He began punching holes in the walls of our apartment. When I confronted him, he began to hide his drinking. A drunk driving arrest led to rehab and a year of sobriety. But he relapsed and refused help. He began verbally abusing me. I contracted my world around him until the threat of physical violence became obvious. Eventually I got counseling and spiritual advising and we divorced. I no longer sat with his mom and dad at the kitchen table.But Orlando and I stayed in touch. After all, we had been friends since seventh grade. He’d call and tell me about his homelessness, his ejection from a halfway house for being drunk. I remarried, moved, and built a healthy life. The gap between our lives widened. After a few years he stopped calling.A Way to Feel ConnectedI began my search for his obituary. My search began as a way to feel connected to him. All typical social contact had been severed by both the divorce and his behavior. At first, acquaintances had fallen away after his violent outbursts in public. Then friends stopped calling after he borrowed money and didn’t pay it back. Even his siblings seemed to become disillusioned after he passed out during a backyard barbecue in front of his nieces. By the time we divorced his family had taken over his care and I dropped out of contact with them. United in our love for him, yet fearing for his life, we seemed to retreat from each other as if disconnecting would help us move forward. When his phone calls stopped and he dropped off social media, I was shadowed by the sense of him wandering the world alone. I would picture him drunk and in constant danger of an accident or cumulation of uncontrolled diabetes keeping him a hair’s breadth from death. I could no longer turn him on his side and wipe his forehead. My search became the only way I could care for him. Each time I didn’t find an obituary, it meant there was still a chance he was alive. Six years after our divorce, his family sent me an email. Orlando had died from a pulmonary embolism, just four days from what would have been our eighteenth wedding anniversary. They did not invite me to the funeral or burial and I craved a way to externalize my grief. I sent a request to the Michigan coroner for his death certificate. When it arrived a few weeks later, I went into my garden and read it repeatedly as in ritual. The cause of death was listed as accidental. I tried not to imagine what had happened. I ran my fingers along the coroner’s signature as if the letters could connect me to everyone who loved Orlando.I Needed a Place to Put My PainMost family written death notices are quite simple, and I’m not sure why his family didn’t write one. Perhaps their grief was too heavy to share publicly. Perhaps they were ashamed of him. Or maybe it just wasn’t a meaningful part of their grieving process. It wasn’t the length of the obituary I needed, nor its ability to express the complexity of his life. It was the simple and public recognition that he had existed. That his life warranted notice. The grieving process needs two things: solitude and community. An obituary would have allowed me the feeling of sharing my loss with others. I knew that when we divorced I had abdicated my rights to the family. But I still loved him as I had since childhood. I needed a place to put my pain.So I once again returned to brewing chamomile tea in his favorite mug, a silver travel mug that was the only thing of his I’d kept after our divorce. I would cup my hands around its rotund shape and for a moment feel his warmth again. I opened my computer, but instead of typing his name into the search engine, I typed it across the top of a new document. I wrote all the words I had searched for. I gave him an obituary. Jimenez, Orlando Reyes, 42, of Waukegan died on August 20, 2016 at a hospital in Detroit. His death was ruled accidental. Orlando will be remembered for the way he loved to make people laugh and for his engulfing hugs. He is survived by his parents, two brothers, and two nieces. He is also survived by his ex-wife, his childhood sweetheart. She continues to use his favorite silver mug in which she brews tea that smells of summer and hope. In lieu of flowers please forgive the addiction and remember the soul. On the other side of addiction only love remains. 

Kirstie Alley Shares Hot Take On Psychiatric Meds

Actress Kirstie Alley's Twitter feed has been the topic of debate over her controversial tweets on psychiatric drugs.Before her Sunday hot take on psychiatry, Alley shared a heartfelt revelation on the popular app. The Cheers actress opened up about what she does with the money she used to spend on cocaine back when she was battling an addiction to the drug. "For u who don't know much about me, I used to be a coke head," Alley who is now 40 years drug-free tweeted on Thursday. "I quit drugs in 1979 & vowed to spend the same $ weekly on flowers that I'd spent on drugs."The 66-year-old added, "I buy & arrange my own flowers as a gift to MYSELF. I buy them in the grocery store."Alley's fans congratulated the actress for her four decades of being drug-free and shared their own sober tales. A couple days later, Alley upset some Twitter users when she called into question the prevalence of psychiatric drugs. Hot Takes"Does anyone else worry about how unconscious we are being rendered by pharmaceutical drugs? Is anyone else concerned that we are the most psych drugged country on the planet? I tell you what, if I was an evil dictator & wanted to control a society, I would drug them into apathy," Alley tweeted on Sunday. Her tweet received mixed reviews from her followers, with some lauding Alley, a long-time Scientologist, for speaking out against what she perceives as an overall overprescription of psychiatric drugs. Alley's views echo those of Tom Cruise, inarguably the world's most famous living Scientologist.Cruise caught a wave of backlash from mental health experts and patients after proclaiming his disdain for psych meds in a now-infamous 2005 interview with Matt Lauer.“I’ve never agreed with psychiatry, ever,” Cruise said. “Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed with psychiatry, and when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn’t believe in psychology.”Prior to the Lauer interview, Cruise had taken Brooke Shields to task with accusations that she was "promoting" antidepressants by saying that the medication Paxil helped her deal with postpartum depression."As far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you have to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields – she’s a wonderful and talented woman, and I want her to do well, and I know psychiatry is a pseudoscience,” Cruise stated. “The thing that I’m saying about Brooke is that there’s misinformation, okay. And she doesn’t understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn’t understand in the same way that you don’t understand it, Matt.”"There's No Such Thing As A Chemical Balance"Cruise went on to denounce the prescription of Ritalin to children and suggested that "vitamins and exercise" could resolve personal issues.  “Drugs are not the answer,” said Cruise. “I think there’s a better quality of life.”Shields responded to Cruise's comments in an interview with People. “I agree with him about his feeling on prescribing drugs to kids. We are in accord,” she said. “I don’t think Ritalin should be prescribed to kids. Postpartum depression is a different matter. I think I’m more qualified to talk about that (than he is).”According to Shields, Cruise offered her a "heartfelt apology" in 2006 for bringing her into his psychiatric debate.

American Medical Association Calls For Ban On Vaping Products, E-Cigs

The American Medical Association has gone on the record against vaping and are calling for a total ban of all vaping products and e-cigarettes that are unapproved by the FDA to be used as "cessation tools."On Monday, the organization published a press release announcing the call for a ban as well as new vaping-related policies.The new policies include:Urgently advocate for regulatory, legislative, and/or legal action at the federal and/or state levels to ban the sale and distribution of all e-cigarette and vaping products, with the exception of those approved by the FDA for tobacco cessation purposes and made available by prescription only;Advocate for research funding to study the safety and effectiveness of e-cigarette and vaping products for tobacco cessation purposes;Call for immediate and thorough study of the use of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic treatment strategies for tobacco use disorder and nicotine dependence resulting from the use of non-combustible and combustible tobacco products in populations under the age of 18;Actively collaborate with health care professionals, particularly pharmacists and other health care team members, to persuade retail pharmacies to immediately cease sales of tobacco products;Advocate for diagnostic codes for e-cigarette and vaping associated illnesses, including pulmonary toxicity.“The recent lung illness outbreak has alarmed physicians and the broader public health community and shined a light on the fact that we have very little evidence about the short- and long-term health consequences of e-cigarettes and vaping products,” said AMA President Patrice A. Harris, M.D., M.A. “It’s simple – we must keep nicotine products out of the hands of young people and that’s why we are calling for an immediate ban on all e-cigarette and vaping products from the market. With the number of young people using e-cigarettes spiking it is not only critical that there is research into nicotine addiction treatments for this population, but it is imperative that we continue efforts to prevent youth from ever using nicotine.”The AMA's full-court press on vaping comes as a wave of illnesses continue to afflict vape users across the country. The CDC announced in early November that vitamine e oil acetate has been found in a high number of  e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) cases. Here is the CDC's Latest Outbreak Information on vaping-related illnesses and deaths:As of November 13, 2019, 2,172* cases of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury (EVALI) have been reported to CDC from 49 states (all except Alaska), the District of Columbia, and 2 U.S. territories (Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands).Forty-two deaths have been confirmed in 24 states and the District of Columbia (as of November 13, 2019):Alabama, California (4), Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia (3), Illinois (4), Indiana (4), Kansas (2), Massachusetts (2), Michigan, Minnesota (3), Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Oregon (2), Pennsylvania, Tennessee (2), Texas, Utah, and VirginiaThe median age of deceased patients was 52 years and ranged from 17 to 75 years (as of November 13, 2019).CDC continues to work closely with FDA, states, public health partners, and clinicians on this investigation. Youth Vaping EpidemicThere is another vaping-related epidemic wreaking havoc across the country and it is affecting teens and adolescents at worrisome rates. Around 2.1 million adolescents were using e-cigarettes in 2017 alone. E-cigarette company Juul has been accused of creating the youth vaping epidemic by deceptively marketing their products to underage individuals. Juul denies these allegations.Government officials have reportedly been meeting behind the scenes to discuss new regulations, potential bans on vaping products, specifically flavored ones. This week Trump is set to meet with the vaping industry executives and public health advocates as he decides whether or not to ban flavoring products. 

Morning Roundup: Nov. 19, 2019

Bill Would Let More People More Doctors Prescribe Addiction Treatment Meds Without Waiting For Insurer's Permission [STAT News]Bella Hadid Talks Mental Health, Runway Modeling [Teen Vogue]Vote To Federally Legalize Marijuana Planned In Congress [Forbes]Lil Xan Says He Suffered Seziures While Going Through Drug Withdrawal [Page Six]Switching From Cigarettes To Vapes May Be Better For Heart Health [CNN]How Ewan McGregor Approached Dan Torrance's Alcoholism In Dr. Sleep [CinemaBlend]Kratom May Cause Liver Damage [WebMD]This New Headset Combats Depression Symptoms Without Medication [Local 12]   

From War Correspondent to Workplace Mental Health Advocate: An Interview with Dean Yates

After years of covering war, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for Reuters, journalist Dean Yates was diagnosed with PTSD and "Moral Injury." He sought healing not only with professionals and clergy, but by writing and sharing his story with the world. What happened next created a new role for him at Reuters and an opportunity to turn something tragic into something inspiring. After meeting at a conference in London, Dean Yates spoke with me from his home in Australia. What did it mean to be a bureau chief for Reuters in Bagdad at the time you were there? Yates: I was the bureau chief in Bagdad at the height of the Iraq war just before the surge of US troops into Iraq. This was George W. Bush’s last roll of the dice. It had plunged basically into civil war. That first six months of 2007 were the most violent period during the Iraq war. There were car bombs going off every day. That job entailed being responsible for coverage of that story but also being responsible for close to 100 men and women in the world’s most dangerous reporting zone. That made it an extremely stressful job. If I had half an idea of what it was going to be like, I’m not sure I would’ve gone there in retrospect because what ended up happening was way beyond anything I was prepared for. On the roof of the Reuters office in BaghdadOver the years you reported on many tragic events including a nightclub massacre that killed 202 people in Bali in 2002 and a tsunami that killed 165,000 in Indonesia’s Aceh province in 2004 before you arrived in Bagdad. You’ve written in your stories about losing several colleagues in Iraq. Can you talk about what that was like? What it comes down to really is, you know, I felt morally responsible for the safety of my staff. I think that’s something a lot of people experience. Even though people say you did everything you could, you shouldn’t blame yourself, that wasn’t how I felt. It surfaced later into this moral injury. I just couldn’t live with myself because of what I saw as my own culpability and my failure. It was a spiritual care worker at the psych ward who helped guide me through a healing ceremony where I was able to pay my respects to Namir (22) and Saeed (40), the two men who were killed in an attack by a U.S. Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007 in Baghdad. This spiritual care worker was able to be at my side. No clinician could have done that. I really found I was able to make peace with myself after that ceremony.What is Moral Injury? Actually, you can trace it back to the writings of Homer, the ancient Greek poet, and his epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey.” What it really means is if someone feels there is something that they did or didn’t do or that they witnessed that so deeply contravenes their moral compass or ethical values, they end up with a moral injury. People often think of PTSD as being something that affects the nervous system, the brain, the body. I think it also affects the soul. Think of a soldier who believed he was doing something good for the community but the Taliban, it turned out, didn’t like what he was doing and so the end result is that children die. You can’t give someone medication for that or give them a bit of evidence-based therapy.That makes sense. I’ve heard a lot of people in recovery talk about how when they were using and drinking, they did things in service of their disease which were not in alignment with their own moral compass. You talk in one of your stories about taking paracetamol and codeine tablets to get to sleep and about drinking heavily as well as staying in bed, do you feel you were self-medicating your undiagnosed condition at that time? Oh yeah, totally. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever suffered from addiction. I went through bouts where I’d rely on alcohol or prescription medication but I was never in that years long cycle that some of my colleagues have been in. I had a little bit of an experience with it, but I got off the booze quite easily on my first psych ward admission.Journalists have been known as boozers for as long as the profession has existed. I remember one weekend I was on duty and I was in the office asleep on the couch so hungover and the boss walked into the office with his wife and I remember him saying to his wife “let’s be quiet, I think Dean’s had a big night, we don’t want to wake him.” If that happened now, I’d be fired. But back then it was all part of the journalist culture. We went out and got roaring drunk. It was how we dealt with a lot of the traumatic stories. When we were in Baghdad we used to spend huge amounts of money on alcohol. Because we had to. Otherwise we would have gone crazy.You’re lucky you were brave enough to seek out help and you did find the help you needed so you no longer had to self-medicate. We talk now in the addiction field about trauma being one of the main causes of addiction.Who can be affected by PTSD? Oh anyone. All it takes is a severe enough traumatic event for someone to be at risk of developing PTSD. But the problem is that people associate PTSD with soldiers and increasingly with first responders. I’ve seen it across so many different sectors of the work force: nurses, doctors, and then in the civilian sphere—domestic violence, road accident victims. In Australia 70% of people will experience a traumatic event, according to Phoenix Australia (a center for post-traumatic mental health in Australia). In the U.S. the biggest group of people with PTSD are actually victims of rape. It doesn’t matter what brought you to the diagnosis. It doesn’t matter what your profession was. You all have flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, depression. We have these things in common that I thought wouldn’t have been possible and it makes me angry that so many of these people suffering with PTSD are silenced. It’s the same with addiction. Addiction is very much a disease of isolation. The whole idea of stigma contributes to the avoidance. It looks to me like avoidance has a role in the development of mental illness and PTSD in the first place. Yes, I had isolated myself incredibly. The only people who knew I had PTSD were my family and a few close friends. It was the same when I was in the psych ward. When I walked in that door it was terrifying. You know once you go through that door you can’t take that back. How’s that going to look on your resume? Because people think you’re crazy.What do you think happened for you in the process of writing your story “The Road to Ward 17” even before you published it? The writing process is cathartic, it’s therapeutic, you learn a lot about yourself; it’s part of the recovery process. There’s so much research out there about the power of writing and sharing your story with others. When you wrote your story, how were your expectations different from what happened when you actually published it? I had initially thought that this could maybe be used as a blog for other colleagues, but then I thought this should actually be published. One of the things I thought about in the psych ward was that these folks who were in there, they were going through really rough times, and no one could tell their story. But I thought if I tell my story it’s a little like telling their story. The story ended up in the hands of our investigations editor in New York who is responsible for what’s called our special reports. We rarely publish first person account stories. But he really liked it. And when the story came out I wasn’t prepared for the response. I was more prepared to get negative responses. For people to be angry about me talking about the Apache attacks and Wikileaks. But I got messages from people all over the world and all walks of life who had experienced trauma just saying thanks for writing your story, thanks for putting this out there, thanks for telling it like it is. I’d only come out of the psych ward a couple months earlier. The video of the attack that killed your two colleagues, and the way only parts of it were released, created a certain perspective that skewed much of the response to it, even your own if I read you right. What have you learned about perspective in all this? Two weeks after Namir and Saeed had been killed, I was sitting in this office with these two generals and they started playing the tape and we had no idea that was coming. I saw the first— not even three minutes— of the tape and the tape was stopped at the moment the Apache fired on the men which included my staff. I walked out of that briefing with this one image in my head of our photographer peering around that corner. That image actually was burned into my brain for years and I just could not get that image out of my head to the point where I actually started seeing him as being responsible for what happened, whereas the order to fire had already been given before he even peered around the corner. And then when the (full) tape was released in 2010 I could not actually physically watch it. I knew what happened. I had read the transcripts by then but I hadn’t actually watched it. It was only when I wrote that story that I was able to watch that tape for the first time because I knew I had to get the timing of the events correct. So it did give me a different perspective. That tape to me shows the world what the Iraq war was really like.Tributes to Namir and SaeedChanging the Face of Mental Health at WorkHow are you transforming what was a tragic event into something inspiring in your new role at Reuters? I wanted to try to create an environment where our staff felt comfortable putting their hands up and saying I’ve got mental illness or whatever and have management respond with compassion so that they could access the resources we have available. Because when you have an environment where people don’t feel comfortable talking about it, there’s not much you can do. We’ve been doing a series of internal blogs at Reuters. I wrote about my PTSD issues, and what it did is it kicked off other journalists writing about their own issues. The next person was a journalist in the Middle East who wrote about his struggle with bi-polar, another woman wrote about her depression, another guy wrote about his burnout. Some of these journalists have been overwhelmed with responses which also makes them feel like they’ve got meaning out of what they’ve done. They’ve got purpose out of what they’ve done. We’ve had about 30 now but not a single blog about addiction. So this colleague of mine wants to write about their addiction but wants to remain anonymous. I think that just shows how much stigma there still is.Those blogs were very powerful in normalizing that conversation to the point where I think they’ve been as effective as anything we’ve done in getting that message out there that it’s okay to come forward, and that you’ll get the support you need. And it’s helpful for managers because if they’re reading about colleagues getting help, they’re thinking I want to be a good manager and make sure my people get the help they need,too. One of my areas of focus this year has been in training managers on how to look after the mental health of their team.This is an important endeavor considering that, according to the Mental Health at Work 2019 Report BiTC, 62% of managers faced situations where they put the interests of their organizations above the interest of their colleagues. You’re not a psychologist or a psychiatrist but what you’re offering is peer support; you can explain to a manager how to talk to their staff who are struggling because you’ve been there. Right, I know the profession and I’ve got the lived experience of mental illness. I try to operate in the early intervention space. I am not an expert but I can be an advocate. I’ve got the street cred. No one can look at me and say you don’t know what you’re talking about. Because I do.If the 12-step movement has taught us nothing else it’s taught us that peer support works. It crosses my mind that there’s something in this for the corporate world. How does mental health and addiction effect a company’s level of productivity?I was able to function very highly for a long time but one of the symptoms of PTSD is avoidance. And so one of the great ways of avoiding your issues is through work and that was how I did it and I know a lot of people who have done the same thing. People want to contribute and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. All the research shows that work is good for people’s mental health in general. But the point is: Don’t look after people’s mental health because it’s good for the business, look after people’s mental health because it’s the right thing to do. People with a mental health issue just want to be acknowledged. They want to be treated as if they had come into the office with their leg in a plaster (cast). You come into the office with your leg in plaster--it’s okay, we’ll sort this out; you’re supposed to be at that conference next week, we’ll send someone else; and okay, you’ve got to go to that doctor appointment, no problem. If you treat people like that, the numbers take care of themselves. Fair enough, though it is interesting to note that at the Mad World Summit in London, where we met, Sir Vince Cable was quoted as saying, “Mental illness costs the UK economy more than Brexit.” Which is a lot of money. And, according to the CDC, by combining medical and behavioral health care services, the United States could save $37.6 billion to $67.8 billion a year.One last question. What would you say to someone out there who’s suffering in silence from depression or PTSD or trauma or substance use disorder or any kind of mental illness? You are not alone.Dean Yates in Times Square, October 2019 (Helen Barrow/Evershine Productions)The Road to Ward 17: My Battle with PTSDReturn to Ward 17: Making Peace with Lost Comrades. 

Upon Release from Prison, a New Kind of Nightmare

When you’re being escorted out of a federal court room in shackles and handcuffs, after being sentenced to almost two decades behind bars, you can almost feel the life ooze out of your pores. The pronounced slam of a gavel drives home the fact you’re not in Kansas anymore, while one hope creeps its way into your brain: the day those cuffs come off and you’re free. This image is your savior, your best and only friend to keep you company throughout the brutally unforgiving years of violence, isolation, and solitude. Visions of beautifully simple things like going to the park or eating strawberry pancakes shoot through your psyche in bright shining lights onto the faded white graffiti laced brick walls of your 9-by-6-foot cell of despair. All this promise makes it all the more devastating when that magical day arrives for the nightmare to end, and you realize just how far you are from getting out of the rabbit hole.“Have you ever played a PlayStation? Hell, have you even used a cell phone?” These are the words the middle-aged Latino case manager told me through the battered food slot inside the cell door of the Special Housing Unit. “Someone like you, I wouldn’t give more than 4 months. The world has passed you by…but good luck.”These words of encouragement came from someone who spent almost as much time in the Bureau of Prisons as I have. A man who has witnessed firsthand how hard it is to adjust to a world that will chew you up and spit you right back. He wasn’t talking about my transition back into the free world. He was talking about the federally funded center that was in charge of restoring my sanity. Institutionalization, PTSD, and Post Incarceration SyndromePTSD and its sister syndrome, PICS (Post Incarceration Syndrome), are disorders in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. The condition may last months or years, with triggers that can bring back memories of the trauma accompanied by intense emotional and physical reactions.During my 15 years of incarceration, I experienced and witnessed atrocities that would make most war veterans cringe. Divided racial lines and the total disregard for human life were the first things that greeted me behind the grimy walls down in the swamps of Louisiana, USP Pollock. The “slaughterhouse of the south” averaged 40 stabbings a month, while incurring 16 murders in an 18-month span. Desensitization set in rapidly when watching a stabbing was as common as watching a baseball game. This was just the first of four penitentiaries in which I was beaten, stabbed, isolated, and herded throughout half of my life.While President Bush was fighting his wars overseas, and smartphones, text messaging, and iPods were shaping humanity, I was envisioning a breathtakingly beautiful sun setting over the ocean. The sound of waves crashing danced through my ears, as I felt the cool wet sand beneath my feet. When President Obama was still fighting the war, and Google, Facebook, and YouTube took over society, I was sitting in solitary confinement, my stomach touching my ankles, as I dreamed of the family dinners at my parents’ house. The four cheeses of mom’s famous lasagna made my mouth water, as I imagined the smiling faces of better years sitting around the table listening to Dad’s old war stories. As President Trump was halfway through his reign of terror, the cuffs finally came off and I was released. But little did I know, the nightmare was far from being over.Institutionalization is a gradual normal reaction to the unnatural and abnormal conditions of prisoner life. The more extreme, harsh, dangerous, or otherwise psychologically taxing the nature of the confinement, the deeper the damage that will be done. During this process, a prisoner incorporates the norms of prison into their habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. It renders some people so dependent on external constraints that they gradually lose the capacity to rely on internal organization and self-imposed personal limits to guide their actions and restrain their conduct.When I was released from the SHU in Big Sandy Kentucky on July 29, 2017, the world seemed to be in hyperdrive. My parents and sister, along with the girlfriend I’ve never held, laughed as I bounced around the car like a dog in heat. The speed of everything left me spinning as I tried to comprehend the tiny screen in my hands that was speaking directions towards the home I’ve never seen. Inside that car I felt alive for the first time in over a decade and a half. Then we stopped a block short from my residence, and all the rules that I’d just broken by being with my family drove away with five minutes to spare, as a whole new nightmare began.Bait and SwitchAccording to the Federal Bureau of Prisons: “Residential reentry centers provide a safe, structured, supervised environment, as well as employment counseling, job placement, financial management assistance and other programs and services. RRC’s help inmates gradually rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising ex-offenders activities during this readjustment phase.” When I walked into the reentry center in downtown Pittsburgh, I wasn’t greeted with a homecoming of old friends and relatives like in the movies. Instead, I sat in a drearily filthy break room as paramedics wheeled off a semi-conscious reentrant to a waiting ambulance. These overdoses, ranging from heroin to K-2, would become a normal part of my daily routine. Once I made my way to the seventh of eight floors, each floor packed to capacity with clueless ex-cons all trying to breathe free fresh air, the prison mentality quickly set back in.My case manager greeted me in her tiny cluttered office and gave me a list of all the rules and regulations that make readjustment damn near impossible. No smartphones, riding in cars, or being ANYWHERE without approval a week ahead of time. If I wanted to stop at 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee in the morning on my way to work, I would be in violation of my release. I also received the bonus of not being allowed to publish any of my writing or leave the city limits. She concluded her orientation with the added kick to the nuts of twenty five percent of my pay getting kicked back to the house for the opportunity to feel the sunshine on my face for the first time in a decade and a half.I also was given the one-time warning about being late. If I was more than 5 minutes late back from a pass, whether it be a late bus or a broken leg, it was back to the box to finish out the remainder of my sentence. Just riding on public transportation is enough to give me a panic attack after years of isolation. The need to sit with my back against the wall is uncontrollable while my hypervigilance runs wild surveying everyone and everything. When you add a traffic jam to that equation, it’s almost debilitating. Going from a world with nothing but time, to one that will literally put you in a cage if it’s mismanaged, was and still is one of the hardest things to deal with after my release.During the 15 years of my incarceration, I lived with a lot of different people. A redneck from Wyoming to a skinhead from Seattle, I’ve been forced to share a bathroom with the best of them. No matter where they were from, there was one thing in common: I didn’t like any of them. Even Mother Teresa is going to get on your nerves if you’re stuck in a broom closest with her 24 hours a day for months on end. Standing on the Edge of FreedomIn the late 70’s, psychologist Bruce K. Alexander conducted his Rat Park study. In this study he took lab rats and housed them in two different environments. In the first, “skinner boxes” (solitary confinement), they were completely deprived of everything, even movement was difficult. The second environment housed the rats in a space 200 times bigger, with wheels, and boxes and other rats to interact with. Inside both settings were two different water bottles. One filled with narcotics to numb the pain that will run through any being under such harsh conditions, and the other without. Each time when the rats are housed in skinner boxes, they go right for the drugs. But, when they’re in rat park with all their friends, free to make decisions and live a good life, they always chose the clean water.After staring at a wall for almost half of my life, being able to look out the windows of the halfway house at the world below but not being able to go out and experience what I’ve been dreaming about for so long was maddening. Having that freedom dangling in my face, after coming so far, was heartbreaking. After years of dreaming about what you want to do, where you want to go, who you want to see, and then discovering you won’t be doing any of those things for a long time, it absolutely puts you right back into that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mentality.Institutionalization can be taken to extreme lengths or become chronic and deeply internalized so that even though the conditions of one’s life have changed, many of the once functional but now counterproductive patterns remain.I spent 14 months inside the halfway house after my release. It almost seemed to last as long as the 15 years that I did behind the walls of our fine penal system. During that time, I wasn’t allowed to go to the park, or take my girlfriend out on a date. I couldn’t sit down for those family meals or see that sunset on the beach, but I made it through it. I absolutely know that I suffer from PTSD and PICS as a result of my incarceration, and I’m far from the only one who suffers from these syndromes. Anyone would feel the same way as I do if they grew up deep inside the belly of the beast. Who knows if the hypervigilance, paranoia, and anxiety will ever allow me to be at ease when I’m out in society. It took me getting out of the system completely before I could even begin to heal.